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By Carolyn Forché
A whip-poor-will brushed
her wing along the ground
a moment ago, fifty years
in the orchard where my father
kept pear and plum,
a decade of peach trees
and Antinovka’s apples
whose seeds come
from Russia by ship
under clouds islanding
a window very past
where also went
the soul of my mother
in a boat with blossoming
sails like apple petals
Poem copyright ©2020 by Carolyn Forché, “Clouds” from In the Lateness of the World, (Penguin Publishing Group, 2020.) Poem reprinted by permission of the author.
Carolyn Forché will read on Saturday, October 5th in The Conversation Room, located near the Mitchell Gallery on the first floor of Mellon Hall on St. John’s Campus located on 60 College Drive, Annapolis, Maryland. The reading begins at 2 p.m. and will be followed by a discussion with the poet and a closed reading of another poem. For more information, visit www.annapolishomemag.com.
Carolyn Forché, poet, teacher, and activist has witnessed, thought about, and put into poetry some of the most devastating events of twentieth-century world history. Forché visited El Salvador and witnessed first-hand atrocities taking place as the civil war unfolded. She recorded her experiences in a groundbreaking book of poems, The Country Between Us, which won the 1981 Lamont Poetry Selection by the Poetry Society of America and became a poetry bestseller. She is perhaps best known for coining the phrase “a poetry of witness,” where she calls poets to address issues of social justice. Her later work is equally powerful, addressing a range of human emotions and experiences. Winner of the Yale Series Younger Poets Award in 1975 and many prestigious fellowships and awards, she was a finalist for the Pultizer Prize and National Book Award. She is currently a Professor at Georgetown University, where she directs the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice.
Funding and support for this Series is provided by Anne Arundel Council for the Arts, St. John’s College, and Annapolis Home Magazine.
© Annapolis Home Magazine
Vol. 15, No. 5 2024